7DRL Success: Hellspace

[Numeron]

I present to you all - Hellspace - Download here.

You've been called in to manage something of a situation at the Lazarus corporation's research and development space station. At the space dock they pretty much have shit under control. (Note the curved section! That was my new tech focus for this challenge, but it unfortunately didn't get into map generation a lot)



So you charge in head first and start stomping heads with your bros...



Investigating the dark sciences...



And possibly finding yourself deeper in the meat grinder than you would've liked...

[deepshock]

Congratulations!

[koiwai]

Nice game. I played it through on Easy, but Normal seems playable and not too much harder now. The key is to follow the arrow, and don't try to clear the level )

Really expected a worm in the end, do you fight it only on Normal difficulty? Or, maybe, the corridor itself was the worm?

In the keybindings, 'u' is set for inventory, but it collides with "hjklyubn", I had to reset that.

It seems that bent geometry of some map pieces is not easy to incorporate into otherwise rectangular map. Shooting can be problemmatic. Crossing bent corridors is probably difficult to implement - you have to somehow decide how to rotate the map correctly. Your approach was probably to break the map into a bunch of rectangular pieces and "magically" join them, so that units "teleport" between these pieces. Looks interesting, sadly it did not become a significant feature of the game. Still, it was fun to walk through these corridors, especially in the last fight, it added some unsteady off balance feeling, which is really awesome.

[Numeron]

Thanks for playing Yeah the corridor at the end is meant to be the worm (the sections even move a bit!), and killing it from the inside is the final thing.

I too figured it was a pity not to have more bent sections in the map, but as you say it's a bit strange having it right in the action since it affects a few things, and it can be hard to tell how far enemies really are away and what you can shoot etc. On the other hand, playing with the camera rotation also gave way to the jolt when you get damaged which I think works pretty well too

[Paul Jeffries]

That was, indeed, badass.

[Samildanach]

I liked the visual movement effects, especially the wriggling corridor (though I didn't realise it was meant to be a worm). The game seems easier than your previous releases. It's the first Numeron game I've finished. That's not really a complaint though, just an observation (I've found your other games mostly pretty challenging).

[Numeron]

Thanks! Difficulty has been a common criticism in the past - I might have dialed it back a little too far this year, but the response has been generally positive regardless



In other news, I got a review where I was rated a 1 in scope (which the reviewers guide says is for "@ on a Map") with the comment "I have played the older games by Numeron. I do not see much new here." ... The score seems super harsh and I'm actually quite upset about it. I can admit the game lacks some innovation, but there is a separate category for that...

The game (in my opinion) exceeds the defined criteria but I'm pretty much at my limit, and can't possibly put any more work into it this challenge than I do with 14 hour days + 26 hour sprint at the end (as I have every year), there's just too much new content and too many new tiles to draw!!! Totally bums me out. </rant>

[pat]

yeah there sure does seem to be some inconsistency between the standards applied by different reviewers. I can't see how your game could be criticised for lacking scope when there are entries which aren't much more than the @ walking around the screen, and you've virtually put together a graphical doom-roguelike-like?! I wouldn't stress about it, your games stand out every year. I think the only one I didn't play much was the grand theft auto one and that was probably because I had a bit of roguelike burnout and wasn't immediately good at it so I gave up.

[pat]

I just went and looked over the reviews you had received, and they're marking you down for making good games in previous years and not blowing their minds all over again. They might have a point, and maybe even a better point if it was a long-term project, but who cares for the purposes of a game jam - of course you'll reuse assets and ideas (I'm a huge offender in that regard).

[Numeron]

Don't get me wrong, I get that there's nothing exciting over previous years, and can accept my other scores so far. Despite the friedly marines and the map rotations, I'm begrudingly ok with an innovation of 1 and find it a valid overall criticism. Given it's a straight forward crawler with little extra gameplay-wise it seems unfair to expect a scope score of 3 or anything... but to put all the effort in with things like an opening cinematic, several differenly themed areas, buttload of new sprites, a 3 tier boss fight - and end up with an average scope less than 2 just seems really disappointing. Its also a little embarrasing to show people in the list after telling them all the effort I went to, as it promotes the game as achieving less than average for a 7drl content-wise when I don't feel thats the case.

Well... I feel a bit silly I even brought it up, I'll put it behind me and smash the scores next year

[Eben]

In other news, I got a review where I was rated a 1 in scope (which the reviewers guide says is for "@ on a Map") with the comment "I have played the older games by Numeron. I do not see much new here." ... The score seems super harsh and I'm actually quite upset about it. I can admit the game lacks some innovation, but there is a separate category for that...

The game (in my opinion) exceeds the defined criteria but I'm pretty much at my limit, and can't possibly put any more work into it this challenge than I do with 14 hour days + 26 hour sprint at the end (as I have every year), there's just too much new content and too many new tiles to draw!!! Totally bums me out. </rant>

I know that feeling well, I had a reviewer last year give me a bad score and the comments basically showed they hadn't even read the menu options at the start of the game... I'd like an appeals process but that would be insanely hard to do. The real answer to the problem is to have more reviewers so that one bad review doesn't tank your total score.

For marketing purposes it's probably better to just quote good reviews anyway, rather than link to a list of 100+ games, unless you're at the very top of that list of course.

[Samildanach]

Don't get me wrong, I get that there's nothing exciting over previous years, and can accept my other scores so far. Despite the friedly marines and the map rotations, I'm begrudingly ok with an innovation of 1 and find it a valid overall criticism. Given it's a straight forward crawler with little extra gameplay-wise it seems unfair to expect a scope score of 3 or anything... but to put all the effort in with things like an opening cinematic, several differenly themed areas, buttload of new sprites, a 3 tier boss fight - and end up with an average scope less than 2 just seems really disappointing. Its also a little embarrasing to show people in the list after telling them all the effort I went to, as it promotes the game as achieving less than average for a 7drl content-wise when I don't feel thats the case.

Well... I feel a bit silly I even brought it up, I'll put it behind me and smash the scores next year

Yes, my understanding of 'scope' is that it's a measure of how the game compares to what would reasonably be expected in 7 days, and to give Hellspace a 1 is ludicrous in my view. Even if a reviewer feels that you've reused a lot of art assets or something, there's no way that Hellspace achieves less than average scope for a one-week challenge.

[Darren Grey]

In other news, I got a review where I was rated a 1 in scope (which the reviewers guide says is for "@ on a Map") with the comment "I have played the older games by Numeron. I do not see much new here." ... The score seems super harsh and I'm actually quite upset about it. I can admit the game lacks some innovation, but there is a separate category for that...

The game (in my opinion) exceeds the defined criteria but I'm pretty much at my limit, and can't possibly put any more work into it this challenge than I do with 14 hour days + 26 hour sprint at the end (as I have every year), there's just too much new content and too many new tiles to draw!!! Totally bums me out. </rant>

I felt the same after someone gave me a 1 in Scope last year! Whilst a different person gave me a 3 in the same category, saying they were amazing by the procedural music, many enemies, unique gameplay, etc. The guy that gave me the 1 rating said "a nice little toy", the most infuriating comment I've ever had about one of my games.

So I understand your pain very acutely! Unfortunately there is no consistency to the reviews and we can't take them all very seriously. The hope is that across 3 reviews you'll get a fair average.

As for Hellspace, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of fresh gameplay compared with your previous games. The new tiles and all are nice, and the game is beautifully polished, but at the end of the day this is a roguelike challenge and it's interesting mechanics I look for. Your game does still have some, mind, but it's a bit too easy and in general doesn't have that overwhelming "wow" factor that Man in the Mirror and Nightfall had. Alas, when you make amazing games people are no longer happy with merely great games!

Anyway, no way it's a 1 in Scope! Screw the critics, when are they ever right?

[Hi]

In other news, I got a review where I was rated a 1 in scope (which the reviewers guide says is for "@ on a Map") with the comment "I have played the older games by Numeron. I do not see much new here." ... The score seems super harsh and I'm actually quite upset about it. I can admit the game lacks some innovation, but there is a separate category for that...

The game (in my opinion) exceeds the defined criteria but I'm pretty much at my limit, and can't possibly put any more work into it this challenge than I do with 14 hour days + 26 hour sprint at the end (as I have every year), there's just too much new content and too many new tiles to draw!!! Totally bums me out. </rant>

Get revenge by giving all the games you review a 3 in scope.